


Breed Something New

by Silex



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Body Horror, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Ignores P2, Infected Characters, Post Game, Rape/Non-con Elements, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7088995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After saving Manhattan and the world from the Redlight virus Alex Mercer has a long way to go before the threat is totally eliminated. Little does he know that the virus has plans for him, plans that he's going to be a part of whether he likes it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breed Something New

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this years ago, right after the game first came out. Up until now it was something that I shared by request only, but now I figure there's no harm in letting this thing see the light of day. If it gets positive response some of my other previously hard to find Prototype fics may be released as well.

Less than a month after it was announced that the military had the Redlight virus under control Alex Mercer discovered that the truth of the situation, as it so often happened, was far less pleasant. Visible signs of the infection were on the decline, the last of the obvious hives having been destroyed, but hunters were starting to show up again, far more determined and far stronger than anything that he had encountered before. The only explanation he could think of was that there was another hive somewhere, home to another runner, hiding and gaining the strength to perpetuate the outbreak.

To better understand the situation Alex had been spending as much time as possible in disguise and mingling with the military, helping them when he could for lack of any more productive way of spending his time. He was just one man after all, and as exceptional as his powers had made him, he could only be in one place at a time. The military had bases and men throughout the city, giving them the advantage when it came to getting information about the situation with the infection. 

He was afraid of returning to Ragland and Dana, for though he had come to consider Ragland a friend and did worry about Dana, he understood that he was a danger to them. One mistake and he would bring Blackwatch straight to them and then they would use the two against him. Dragging them back into the ordeal wouldn't be fair, especially now that he had come to accept that he wasn't really Alex Mercer, just a virus wearing his form. If he sought out Dana it would be a pathetic joke, the thing that killed her brother pretending to be her brother just to get attention. Unable to allow himself to go to the only people he knew, the only outlet for his desire for human companionship was to fight along side the Marines and help as best as he was able.

As long as he was careful, maintaining his disguise, never visibly using his powers, avoiding Blackwatch soldiers and only joining up with the Marines when they were actively fighting the infected, he managed to spend time with them, though he had gotten the impression that there were times when they knew what he really was and were simply feigning ignorance out of fear that he would turn on them. Many times he had been tempted to take action to show what he truly was, but each time he managed to resist, afraid that doing such a thing might draw the attention of Blackwatch and bring an end to his ability to hide amongst the Marines.

From his time with the Marines he managed to discover that the military believed that the infection was now holding out in the sewers, the warm and dark tunnels making the perfect refuge for the virus.

Attempts to flood the sewers with BloodTox had worked for a short time, but soon hunters and lesser infected started showing up again, a few at first, but more and more came every day. It came as no surprise to Alex, for the toxin had less of an effect on him each time it was used until he was able to walk through clouds of it as easily as any human. Cross had been right about his growing immunity, something that gave him no pleasure since it only meant that the Redlight and Blacklight viruses were becoming harder to eradicate.

In his darkest moments he concocted elaborate fantasies about what might have happened if Cross had not succumbed to Redlight and survived to tell the truth about what had happened. Despite the way the Specialist had manipulated him, he considered Cross to have been a friend. He had no fondness for Blackwatch as a whole, but he often imagined that Cross would have managed to convince his superiors that he was no threat and that they would allow him to somehow integrate into their forces, secretly of course. Mostly those daydreams were about working with Cross again, for after all the man had done to him, there was no denying that Cross had listened to him when there was no tactical advantage in doing so and Alex liked to believe that Cross had done it out of sympathy. It was stupid of course, in reality any encounter he would have with Blackwatch would end in him killing them before they could kill him, but he could see no better place for himself than alongside them, for in a way they were as monstrous as he was, possessing the same disregard for human life, albeit for very different reasons.

To avoid losing himself in foolish daydreams he spent as much time as seeking out infected to fight and groups of Marines to hide in to pretend that he was human and doing something to help.

The temptation to seek out the supposed final hiding place of the virus was strong, but the part of him that he considered to be human rebelled at the thought of going into the sewers. It was foolish and he knew it, for all the reasons a human would hesitate to go to such a place did not apply to him, yet he was not about to act in any way that would so utterly deny any human thoughts and concerns he had, for to do so would be to fully accept the fact that he was not human. The illusion mattered to him, self deception was what allowed him to live with himself.

Today was no exception to the routine he had fallen into, and after a long night of hunting down infected to avoid sleeping, something that was unnecessary due to his biology, but something the human aspects of his mind were convinced he needed, he sought out a group of Marines.

When he found them it took him a while to decide who he would look like to join them. He tired to use a different form each time, to keep them from getting too suspicious, which he was sure would have happened if the same supposedly dead man kept showing up at different points all across the city. By being a different dead man each time he made it harder for them to know what they were looking for, but this time he didn't have much time to think, for the Marines were close to being overwhelmed by a group of at least half a dozen particularly large hunters.

Once he selected a suitable form, one of the first Marines he had killed, he jumped down from the rooftop he had been observing the fighting from and rushed to join them. Picking up the rifle that had belonged to a fallen Marine before any of them could notice his lack of weaponry, he opened fire on one of the hunters, trying to get the creature’s attention so that it might close distance, allowing him to fight it hand to hand, which would be possible considering how thoroughly distracted the actual Marines were. He knew it was dangerous, but he preferred to get close to the infected, consuming them when possible so that he might better understand how they were changing. His abilities had continued to grow, far surpassing what they had been to begin with, and he had come to believe that it had something to do with what he acquired by consuming more powerful infected, as though the process allowed him to gain whatever it was that made them stronger.

Normally the infected, recognizing him for what he was, were quick to single him out for attack, but this time they kept their distance, allowing the Marines to shoot them, but not making any move to defend themselves. At the same time they were keeping the Marines in one spot, almost as though they were waiting for the right moment, but what they were waiting for he could not begin to guess.

The Marines must have had similar suspicions, for they began to look in all directions rather than just focusing on the hunters. Something was about to happen, they all knew it, the question was, what?

When the attack finally did come, it was from the only direction the Marines hadn't been looking and Alex hadn't been prepared for, from below.

Without so much as a rumble of warning, the street beneath them erupted upwards as four hydras thrust their way to the surface. Instead of following their normal attack pattern and picking up bits of debris to throw, the hydras slammed their bodies against the ground, creating a square of destroyed pavement around Alex and the Marines, who were all watching in a state of shock.

The hydras repeated this strange action several times over, the purpose not becoming apparent until too late when the street gave way, revealing that the hydras were connected by a writhing mat of tissue. What had seemed like four separate creatures were in reality the appendages of a single tremendous entity. The creature shifted, then sent tentacles lasting out in all directions, groping sightlessly for the humans trapped in the ruined street.

Alex tired to fight it and all around him he could hear the Marines were doing the same, but there were too many tentacles, for each one Alex was able to break ten more came to take its place. One by one the Marines were taken and pulled down to the creature, where gaping holes opened to take them, until it was just Alex left. With no one else left, all of the tentacles focused on him, overwhelming him by sheer weight on numbers, wrapping him up, crushing him and pulling him down into the creature. It was all he could do to keep himself intact under the immense pressure being exerted on him. Attempting to escape was not an option when he was barely able to keep himself from being crushed.

Then it all began to move, flowing and pulling him along with it, making it even harder for him to struggle as he was pulled into an even smaller space.

The infection must have been pulling him though a sewer tunnel, not that he realized it at the time, since all his focus was on trying to get away from the crushing weight of the thing enveloping him.

Time after time the massive, hooked claws he had shifted his hands into scraped against stone and dug in, but each time they were pulled free by the sheer mass of what was pulling him along. Often it happened with such violence that his claws were pulled away from him rather than the stone, leaving him diminished by that much each time it happened, but in his fear at how his struggles were growing increasingly weak he failed to make the connection between his loss of tissue and diminishing strength. The human part of his mind was convinced that he needed to breath and blamed his failing strength on suffocation, unable to comprehend that what oxygen he needed was being brought to his body by the tissue surrounding him as though he were nothing more than a single cell in some vast organism.

Finally the flow stopped and the engulfing mass surged away from him, leaving him in an open area.

Too weak to stand, it was a struggle for him just to make his eyes adjust to the darkness.

What he saw was shocking, but nothing he hadn't seen before. As far as he could tell, he was inside a hive, the walls and floors covered with slick red flesh and numerous cysts pulsing on the walls. A similar swelling on the floor near him opened up, revealing one of the Marines he had been fighting alongside. The man was unconscious and restrained by the viral tissue of the floor, but otherwise unharmed as far as Alex could tell, presented to him almost like an offering.

In his weakened state, Alex gave no thought of refusing or waiting to see what would happen to the man, instead he pushed himself up to his hands and knees and crawled over to the bound Marine.

Disgusted by his actions, but seeing no other choice, Alex allowed tendrils to surge from his body and onto the Marine, consuming him.

It was not much, but it was a start, giving Alex enough strength to stand up and start looking for a way out.

Motion caught his attention and he turned in time to see another one of the swellings, this one on the wall, slowly open up and drop its contents to the ground in a flood of liquid and clots of matter.

The sight of the small figure that landed gracelessly, in a heap on the floor caused him to gasp in horror.

It was Elizabeth Greene.

Rising to her feet she took a step towards him, slick with the fluids from her rebirth and looking much as he remembered her, with her unevenly cropped hair and red lesions on the side of her face. There was one difference though, she no longer wore the strange suit he had seen her in during their previous encounters, instead she was naked, though if this had anything to do with the fact that he had consumed her and the virus had needed to rebuild her from scratch, he had no clue. All he knew was that it made her all the more repulsive, her petite frame covered with sores similar to the ones on her face, drawing his eyes to all of her most intimate places. What should have been attractive, based on stolen memories, was instead loathsome, dripping infection or raw, red flesh covered in oozing sores.

With each step she took towards him, he took a step back, until there was no where left for him to go and his back hit the wall. The strength he had gained from everything he had consumed had been stripped away from him with the mass that had been pulled from his form, leaving him no stronger or more capable than an ordinary human. He could still shift his form, but lacked the strength to make any use of his powers.

His horror only grew as Greene finished closing the distance between the two of them and wrapped her arms around him with superhuman strength. In the hive she was in her element, drawing on the strength of all of the remaining infection.

Her embrace was not crushing, but it was enough to hold him immobile as he felt the virus in her react in some way with the strain he carried. Tendrils rose up from her body where she touched him, flowing over him, and for a moment he feared that she was going to consume him, but instead they flowed back into her, leaving him intact, but subtly altered.

Somehow she had pulled away what made up his clothing, leaving him naked and feeling vulnerable in a way he had never felt before. There was no sense to it, he could armor himself with little more than a thought, but between his weakened state and Greene's overwhelming power left him with a sense of defenselessness.

The air was body temperature warm, as was the wall behind him, which yielded against his back with the pressure Greene was exerting on him. Her body was slick and soft against his, triggering a flood of stolen memories, none of which were helpful or appropriate given the situation.

More tendrils wrapped around his body, this time from the wall, holding him in place.

Once he was secured Greene released him and took a step back, satisfied that he would not be able to get away.

She stared at him, as though trying to figure something out, and the specific focus of her attention was extremely unnerving. Her facial expression was utterly blank, giving no hint of what the nature of her interest might have been.

Since he was not truly human he put no special value on any of his anatomy, but the memories of those he had consumed provided all manner of suggestions about the context of Greene’s stare, bringing him to a horrific realization. Just as he had the fragmented memories of his victims which he used to achieve a desired end, such as calling in an air strike on a hive or piloting a helicopter, so might the Redlight virus as a whole.

His first fearful impression was that this whole ordeal was to torture him, but he quickly dismissed that as nonsense, panic from his attempt to put the situation into a human frame of reference. A virus had no reason to cause fear in its victims. The only goal of a virus was to perpetuate itself, but even in that context what was being done to him made no sense. If that was its goal it could have simply consumed and remade him. There was a reason he was still alive, albeit one that he couldn't begin to imagine, which spoke more of his lack of imagination than anything else.

Greene’s face twisted into a puzzled frown, suggesting that what she was seeing did not match up with her expectations, whatever they might have been.

Perhaps it had to do with some memory the virus had from Greene, or it might have even been Greene herself, if she was still capable of acting as an individual.

With nothing else to go on Alex wracked his brain trying to recall everything he knew about Greene.

She had been part of the test group in Hope Idaho. She had been one of the many who succumbed to the infection, but differently than any of the others, either due to partial immunity or her being the perfect host. At the time she had been pregnant.

PARIAH, her child, the thing that was supposed to be the perfect organism, the end of evolution.

The thought came to him making him feel as though he had been punched in the stomach. Greene, if there was anything left of her, wanted to try and recreate her family. Or, perhaps just as Alex used the memories of the soldiers he had consumed to go through the motions of driving a tank, the Redlight virus was trying to use Greene’s memories to go through the motions of perpetuating itself in a way it had not tried previously in an attempt to achieve perfection.

Despite his situation, Alex laughed.

“It won’t work,” he spoke with more bravado than he felt, but the whole situation was so absurd that he was unable to help it, “You can’t force me to, and believe me, there’s no way I’d want to.”

Greene reached out a hand and his laughter ended in a startled choking noise when grabbed him by his manhood and began to gently stroke him.

“Try all you want, but it’s not happening,” he said, but even as he spoke something was happening, something which had no precedent based on his memories.

As had happened when Greene had removed his clothing, tendrils reached out from her. This time they only rose from her hand and arm, and rather than sinking in, they gently rubbed and caressed, seeming to stick to his flesh as the matter that made them mingled with that which made him. She was doing something to him, somehow using the virus she carried to start a change in him, centered on, and most dramatic in, his masculine anatomy, which was still wrapped in the cluster of tendrils flowing from her hand and arm.

He could feel her exerting her will over him and was powerless to stop her. In a process that felt somewhat similar to the way he manipulated his own form, she manipulated his body to get the desired response, nothing so dramatic as the transformations he willed upon himself, but shocking none the less due to its intimacy. There was more to it as well, an invisible change, altering the very way he thought, generating a spark on interest in what was going on. Despite all logic, he was actually starting to enjoy what she was doing to him.

For the first time he realized that whatever strain of Blacklight he had carried had no true imperative to spread, but just as he had gained the ability to manipulate his form into weapons from whatever it was he gained from consuming his first hunter, Greene had implanted that drive in him. It filled him with an urgency and desire he had never known, save in stolen memories he had found no time for or interest in, and at the same time it revolted him to suddenly have so little control over his own body after being able to so thoroughly manipulate every aspect of his form. In a way it was like the parasite all over again, yet at the same time there was no comparison. This was something he wanted to have happen, even though he could tell that the longing was not entirely his own.

This new need lined up perfectly with stolen memories, overwhelming everything else.

He struggled against the tendrils holding him with renewed strength, his naturally fluid form shifting rapidly both from fear at what he knew was going to happen and the drive to bring about the end to what he was feeling.

Greene had let go of him, backing away to look at him again. This time what she saw must have better matched her expectations, for she nodded slowly, like a marionette manipulated by an inept puppeteer.

She was still revolting, still obviously diseased and the antithesis of what he was feeling based on the memories he possessed, but at the same time she was the only thing capable of giving him what he so desperately needed.

Satisfied that things were as they were supposed to be, Greene smiled, showing teeth streaked with red. More tendrils flowed out from the wall, reaching out for Greene, guiding her to forward, then pulling her up and pressing her against Alex so that he wouldn't be able to try and move away from her.

There was a moment of mutual struggling where she maneuvered her way into the proper position to achieve her goal as Alex squirmed in a futile attempt to deny her, but there was nothing he could do.

Her body was feverishly warm against his, still wet from her emergence from the cyst on the wall. Close as she was to him, he could smell her, not a female smell, or even a human smell, it was rot and still air, the smell of death and loathsome things growing in the dark. The human aspect of his mind was disgusted enough that he should have been totally incapable of providing her with what she wanted, but the part of him that was more virus than anything else recognized its own and wanted to initiate further contact.

He was shaking uncontrollably, dread mingling with anticipation. It was like watching a hunter charging at him. He knew that what was about to happen would not be pleasant, but at the same time he longed for it to begin, if just to have it over with.

Finally she was ready, and at the last moment before the happening, the part of Alex which was human and terrified gave voice to its fear.

“Let me go! Stop! Stop! No!”

The last syllable rose up into a howl as she pressed herself hard against him, forcing her way down onto and around him.

For Alex it was a moment of realization so intense that it may as well have been agony. A flood of memories of what the experience he was going through was supposed to be like washed over Alex and he sought refuge in them. He allowed himself to be lost in what the experience was supposed to be based on the memories of hundreds of dead men, rather than what it was as he faced it. As a result it was very much as it would have been between any two humans, or at least it started that way.

It went from him allowing the virus to move him according to what was needed, to him acting based on memories of what took place between a man and woman. Their bodies moved in unison and, through denying the reality of the situation, Alex was able to find pleasure in the experience.

The tendrils holding him in place loosened their grip and he and Greene slid down to the floor. They stayed that way for a fleeting moment with Greene on top of him.

She looked down at him, her eyes wide and confused, something like tears, only thicker flowing from them, over and over again she mouthed the word ‘sorry’. For the first time since he had freed her, Alex realized that somewhere, deep within her, the young woman from Hope Idaho still existed and that she was as helpless in all this as he was. In a perfectly human gesture of tenderness, she brought up a hand to gently caress his face, then the moment passed, the viral imperative took over and anything remotely human about the interaction faded.

Shifting so that he was now on top, with Greene pressed down against the ground, Alex gritted his teeth, his face contorted into a grimace of effort mixed with pleasure, and thrust in deeper. Greene arched her back and let out a small gasp, pressing herself against him as hard as she could, but it did not stop there.

In a process similar to what happened when Alex sought to consume someone, he began to flow further into her and her inner anatomy shifted to accommodate and encourage.

Red and black ropes of flesh rose up from his body to wrap around Greene, who was undergoing a similar shift, thick tendrils rising up from her to wrap around him. Soon she was as much in him as he was in her.

He felt no fear as they melted into each other, only a desire the likes of which he had never known before, but the desire was not entirely his own. Immersed in Greene, he was immersed in the hivemind of the virus as well, and was lost to its will. The virus itself had engineered this meeting between the two of them to assure its own survival and there was no way Alex could hope to fight such an overwhelming need. He had become a part of Greene, and Greene, as always, was a part of the hivemind.

Entwined as no two humans had ever been, that which made up Alex and that which made up Greene writhed together in a clot of pulsing matter with no traces of humanity.

There was no longer any physical distinction between them. Each of them moved that which was the other as easily as they controlled themselves. Then, as the writhing of the undifferentiated tissue grew increasingly frantic, it began to condense back into two distinct, human, shapes. Tendrils still lashed out and sought entry, but within them it was possible to recognize Alex and Greene as separate entities.

Alex was all but shaking with effort, and Greene was gasping, grabbing at his back with fingers that grew into claws, raking deep gouges in Alex’s flesh which closed almost as quickly as they were made.

Suddenly, all movement stopped, entwined tendrils froze in mid motion, Greene let out one last gasp, tendrils retracted and Alex fell away from her.

He stared at Greene, horrified at what had just happened between them, yet undeniably satisfied. The memories of those he had consumed suggested that this was a time for tenderness and he went along with them to avoid having to face the actuality of what had conspired between them. Reaching out to gently brush Greene’s ragged hair back from her eyes, expecting her to react in a manner suggested by the memories, but she was completely unresponsive. Her breathing was steady and her eyes were open, but for all the response she gave, Alex might as well not have been there at all. This sparked another memory, how one of his victims had thought Greene’s mind had been destroyed by the virus, and the full weight of the situation sank down upon him.

He had given Greene what amounted to a sample of the strain of Blacklight he carried and through her that unique strain would be carried to the rest of the hive, the rest of the infected. The abilities that had been unique to him would soon begin to manifest in the infected created by Greene. Possibly it was happening already, for he had no clue how long they had spent as one.

More than that, unlike what would have taken place between two humans, theirs had been an equal exchange, Greene leaving as much in him as he had in her, subtly changing the virus that made him who he was. He was part of the hivemind now, still an individual, but able to feel it, just as he was able to feel the vague thoughts of those he had consumed. Worse, the drive Greene had implanted in him remained, manifesting itself in a new and terrifying way. Though he had no clue how he knew it, he understood that his strain of Blacklight had been made contagious by their interactions, capable of spreading to anyone he came into contact with. Before he could escape he would need to figure out a way to control it, lest he carry the virus throughout Manhattan. Then something moved nearby and he realized that there might be neither time nor reason to worry about that.

Several of the cysts of the walls were beginning to shake violently as whatever had been forming within stretched newly formed limbs in preparation to break free.

The children he had sired with Greene were about to be born.


End file.
